The
Johnny Depp Zone Interview
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By Patricia Danaher
HQ Magazine, Dublin Herald.ie
July 01, 2009

Johnny Depp is two hours
late for his
interview with HQ, but is so charming when he arrives, it’s impossible
not to be disarmed.

The morning after the premiere in Chicago of his new movie, Public
Enemies, in which Depp plays the gangster John Dillinger, he
is still shocked by the hordes of people who thronged the streets of
the city the night before, calling out his name.

“Oh man, you don’t get used to that kind of thing,” he sighs.
“If you do get used to it, you’re insane, truly. I mean, I appreciate
it on a very profound level, but there’s only so much a human being can
deal with and that’s why I don’t leave my house. I don’t go anywhere. I
mean, why would you?”

Reluctant

At 46 and with more than
two decades of
screen success under his belt, he remains a somewhat reluctant star,
who swears he didn’t plan anything that unfolded for him in his very
successful career, but that luck has been the big factor in him
becoming a huge box office draw.

“I’ve been very lucky, in the sense that things just arrived
when they arrived. I didn’t sculpt anything. I just kind of did what I
did and was very lucky to have had people like Tim Burton supporting
me. Paramount Studios didn’t want to hire me for Sleepy Hollow
and Tim fought for me, and that was a big shift in my—I hate to call it
a ‘career’—but my life,” he explains.

It does not ring of false modesty, given the range of arthouse
movies Depp has chosen, such as Ed Wood or Edward
Scissorhands, when he could have opted for a plethora of
highly paid, uncomplicated, heartthrob roles.

Playing Gonzo journalist Hunter
S Thompson in Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas is one of the most interesting of
the many iconoclastic characters Depp has inhabited.

He has just finished another Thompson project, Rum
Diaries [Editor’s note: The Rum Diary]
based on the novel of the same name. He and Thompson became close
friends and to this day he wears a shark tooth necklace that Thompson
gave him.

“What a pleasure to have been involved in that film. It took
almost 17 years to make it happen. Hunter and I had talked about trying
to get Bruce Robinson, who directed Withnail
and I, to direct Rum Diaries. But Bruce
was so traumatized by his last film and didn’t want to do it, but I
badgered him for years to get him to come back. It was exhausting, but
it was a great, great experience and I’m so happy and proud to have
finished it for Hunter.”

When Depp is not making movies or out talking to the media he
spends most of his time blissfully ensconced in family life in France
or on his island in the Bahamas with his partner Vanessa Paradis and
their two children, Lily Rose (10) and Jack (6).

He put down roots with Vanessa—after long and volatile
relationships with Kate Moss and before that, Winona Ryder—after a
chance meeting in France.

Smart

“My kiddies are
infinitely smarter than I
am and when I do leave the house to go to their school
functions, and I
witness their life in school with their friends, that’s the most sort
of learning experience you could have. I learn so much just by watching
them. When we go to the Bahamas, there are no toys and they just build
little houses out of shells.”

Depp has always had a punkish sensibility, as an artist and as
a musician. A long-time friend of both Shane McGowan and Iggy Pop, Depp
also loves to play music and has a band called P. He confesses that the
first thing he ever stole was a book of chords when he was 12.

“The age of 12 was a magical moment for me, because it was the
age when I discovered the guitar. I don’t remember anything afterwards.
I don’t remember puberty. I just locked myself in a room and played the
guitar.
I remember going into a store in Owensboro in Kentucky where I
grew up, where I found a chord book by Mel Bay and I slipped it down my
trousers and walked out of the store. And although that was
criminal
activity, that’s how I learned to play guitar.”

In Public Enemies, directed by Michael
Mann and co-starring Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard, Depp plays
the Depression-era Robin Hood, John Dillinger, a character with whom he
has been fascinated since childhood.

“I can remember being about 10 years old and having a
fascination with John Dillinger and I didn’t know why. The same kind I
had with Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton when I was a child. I think
it has to do with my family. My grandfather, who I was very close with
when I was a kid, had run moonshine into dry counties, and my
stepfather also had been a bit of a rogue. He’d spent some time in
Statesville Prison.”

It’s been a while since Depp went on the road with the Pogues
in the early 90s, but he and Shane McGowan are still firm friends and
in regular contact.

“Shane, that great poet! I had an email from him the other day
for my birthday and he’s doing great.

“Yeah, I need to try to get back to Ireland again soon, it’s
been ages.”

Talk of Depp’s legacy or comparisons to old matinee icons,
such as James Dean, frankly baffle him.

“I’m just an actor,” he says. “What I would like to leave
behind is not to embarrass my kiddies with anything I did in terms of
film or anything else.”